Five Things Jack and Kate Are Not
by intastella burst
Summary: Don't be afraid," he tells her time and again, when all other words fail. "I'll protect you." She hears "I'll keep you safe." Jack/Kate, Sawyer/Kate, Jack/Juliet, Sawyer/Juliet. Character death.


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Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.

Anais Nin__

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**1. Patient******

Jack always tells her that he doesn't drink, except at dinner sometimes. A glass of Merlot, Chardonnay. Fancy stuff she grew up lusting after, hoity-toity alcohol Tom told her that he'd buy her one day as they sipped their illicit flat beer.

But sometimes, she discovers, Jack can't wait for dinner, when his breath tastes like toothpaste over vodka, and when he kisses her chastely to make up for his lateness she can't help but feel like she doesn't want to wait anymore, either. Not for him. Not for anyone.

The next day she leaves Aaron with the nanny and begins the hunt for the little girl in Alabama.

Their glass, if there even _is_ one, it's half-full; they expect the worst and in doing so create it. That's why he leaves; why she gives up. Their harsh reality, it's all of their own making (_you make your own luck!_), but how can you manipulate the future when you're so tied up in another person that moving even an inch hurts to your core? _It makes no sense._

"Don't be afraid," he tells her time and again, when all other words fail. "I'll protect you." (She hears _I'll keep you safe._)

Ironically, this is the one thing that he truly believes in.

And she wants to believe him in return; wants to let herself fall on his shoulders, let him bear her weight. She wants to, but she never quite gets around to it, because this thing that they have is a complicated experiment that requires time to grow, and Kate isn't the watching-paint-dry-type; she wouldn't be Kate if she didn't need some kind of immediate gratification.

And Jack wouldn't be Jack if he were actually capable of giving it to her.

**2. Honest**

They don't survive, not in the real world, which is a sublime and fatal irony. They can't make it work, not in a world where things are supposed to be straightforward (_and how was your day, honey?_), light and dark (_Adam and Eve are dead_), in this weird alternate universe where he knows what she did and she knows about his father, where everything is readily explainable by the cold hard medical facts, where you never scent the heady flavor of magic on the errant late-night breeze, and when you think you do it's just the heavy taste of the coming rain.

They are, for a little while, the one-in-a-million success story, the gloriously cheesy comic book cliche, the Red Sox winning the World Series: the hero and the felon. Together. Happy. A made-for-TV fable of survival and contradictions, coincidence and fate.

(Jack doesn't believe in fate, and neither does she.)

They are all right for a little while. But then it falls apart, piece by fragile piece: their blond little boy begins to get too big (_his blue eyes, they're so familiar_); Jack's patients die, more and more every day; she takes to wearing her hair up, tight, so sleek and glossy; he calls all of the unfamiliar numbers in her cell.

All these multiple intertwined truths, they can't handle them, can't get a grip on this impersonal, unfeeling context, reality; they can't withstand the sting of old hurts smarting anew, and when they get back _at long last, ahhh, the air thick and deceptively pure whooshing through their lungs_, they are relieved beyond measure. And they try, so hard, to return to their old patterns, because if they can't at least get back to what worked for them before, the lying, the cheating, the heartbreak, the uneasy truce of easy camaraderie that lies between passions, well then they're probably better off alone.

She lies awake nights, muscles tense, ready for action, hair wild and coarse on her neck and today's choices, tomorrow's desires _oh_-so-tempting, on her tongue, in the palm of her hand. He sleeps like the dead two hours a night and ponders, thirsts, self-flagellates for the other five. Unnecessary pain never felt so good.

This is what they are: self-destruct and rebuild, give and take, look then look away. Going back to it feels so delicious it's almost like sin. _  
_  
They try so hard, but something's changed, against all their best-laid plans: this time, who they were, what they did before this, before the crash, this time it _does _matter.

(_But Jack still doesn't want to know._)

**3. Kind**

There is a difference, she decides, between being nice and being kind. Being nice is when you do something for someone else. Being kind is doing something for you both, and hopefully building something constructive with it.

Jack is such a nice man.

He finds her molded to the edge of her sofa one too-muggy evening after work, hands clasped around her knees, gaze tight on nothing. She feels rather than sees him sit down beside her, scan her face, trying to figure out what she needs from him (_she needs him to see). _She turns her head to watch a question form in his gently probing eyes (_what's wrong?), _sees him arrive at his inevitable conclusion (_Sawyer;_ he knows her far too well to be wrong, or that's what he thinks) and carefully, systematically, just as he has one hundred times before, shut down his own emotional response before reaching to tease the elastic out of her hair. His fingers massage soothing patterns into the base of her skull.

She stiffens at his touch.

"Let's go get you some dinner, okay? You look so pale."

The knife twists, and jabs, and something rises up in her stomach, clamoring to get out, and she wants to vomit, but she smiles for him instead, and the composite image must be awful, because Jack tenses, afraid that he's done something wrong.

They say that kindness is a sin, but it's the only one Kate has yet to commit.

**4. Faithful**

They're neither of them very religious people. Jack's father always said that Sundays were for studying or screwing, and Kate's mom stopped going to church after her second marriage. But the funny thing about them both is that despite the lack of moral upbringing they each have a vague, but vivid perception of a Line separating good deeds from bad, people who will be rewarded from people who will be punished. (_Intent doesn't count, does it? _If it does then we're all screwed.)

The fundamental difference between them lies in which side of the line they choose to stand on--not necessarily the side on which they belong.

Jack dreams in black and white, always, colors bleeding in the edges but never quite making it to the heart of the story. One night he dreams that Kate is dead, her blood thick and endless on his hands, and he wakes up gasping Juliet's name, and tears stream hot down his face but he's too numb to feel them.

Kate forgives him for this, the first time. The second time it happens she isn't there to care; she's twisting and turning in her single twin-sized bed, experiencing her own sort of nightmare.

They say that we all choose our own poison. Jack thinks he'd like to see them tell that to Romeo.

In a way, Kate feels obligated to Juliet. Her next nightmare won't feature Sawyer in her bed, but rather someone else's. That's much better. Much. It definitely decreases her chances of going to hell, and that's always a plus, hey?

Jack holds Kate's hand in his, and his palm is so cool and dry, her pulse _thump-thumping_ against his fingertips, and they don't look up when Juliet and Sawyer creep in the back door.

They don't need to.

**5. Ready**

She let him go, and that was her first (_last?)_ mistake.

"You didn't know. There's no way you could've--Kate. Kate. _Freckles--"_

She screams, piercing through the smoky night, and there is dirt on her hands and at her back and dirt, dirt _everywhere,_ she can't see or breathe but for the dirt suffocating her from all sides; and she screams again, and again, rocking on her knees, throat ripped raw, and when he still won't open his eyes, when he remains still and cold in her arms, that's when she believes.

a


End file.
